Most helpful positive review

Before purchasing this phone, I checked out the iphone and Evo. The Evo didn't turn me on that much. The iphone, although the look and feel is "quality" at the highest, in my opinion, performance lacks. The main reason for me to purchase a cell phone was(is)to have the option to purchase stocks when I'm away from my home computers. Since 4g is not offered here in Florida, I needed a phone that can go from (A)to(B) without hesitation, because in this business, hesitation can cost me much more than the cost of the phone in the long run. When I first tried the HTC Mytouch from Tmobile--my dreams came true! First off, the processing speed is outstanding. Also, upload and download times are just as fast or faster than my wifi connected computers. Tmobile has the HSPA+ connection, which is much faster than 3g. This phone for me is the "Bomb"! If there is anything negative that I can say about this phone, I wish the volume was a little louder, other than that, I cannot speak enough about it. Whether for business or pleasure--You can't go wrong with this phone!!!

Most helpful critical review

I purchased this phone with a 2 year contract, so I really wanted to love it. Unfortunately, I have some issues with it. I rated this item based on the attributes of the phone itself, not T-Mobile's service, and not the Android operating system. But as you need both of these to use the phone I'll include them in my review. I use the phone in a variety of ways throughout the day. I depend on it as I travel around for work (checking my email, making calls, using the data connection), and I also use it in my free time for browsing the web, using interesting programs, finding stuff and getting directions, listening to music, and reading books. It can do all of these things, some better than others, and it's capabilities are miles ahead of my old smartphone, as long as I have reception and a charged battery, which unfortunately is not as often as I would like.

The phone itself: It has a beautifully large and clear touchscreen (and appears to be scratch-resistant), a nice camera that takes big but usually blurry pictures and HD videos, it is thin and light (compared to my old smartphone) but still seems pretty tough. You can look at the advertised features, it does in fact have and do all that stuff. There are two major problems for me, and that is why I rate it 3 stars instead of 5. Battery and Buttons.Battery: It lasts me a little over half a day. I use the phone a lot, but not a crazy amount. If you use it for any length of time doing anything, the battery is at 25%. Worse, if the phone can't get reception it seems that it burns through the battery just as quickly searching for reception as if you were running a program or talking on the phone. If you sit in a building with the phone on and no reception for four hours, the battery is pretty much dead. And not getting reception can happen pretty frequently. My old smartphone could go for a couple of days without charging it unless I was really using it very heavily. I have not made it through an entire day yet without the battery dying or being very low.Buttons: Besides the annoying placement of the buttons (it is difficult to hold the phone without pressing a button), I have a real problem with the power button. The power button at the top of the phone is not recessed, it sticks out a little. It is also very sensitive, if you gently run your finger along the top of the phone you will depress the button. When I put the phone into my pocket the impact of the phone with the inside of my pocket depresses the button about half the time. This should be a minor annoyance, just waking up the phone for a little while. However, EVEN IF THE PHONE IS TURNED OFF gently depressing the button will turn the phone back on. So when I am in an area with no reception and I want to turn the phone off to conserve the poor battery life, if I put the phone back into my pocket, or anything presses against the top of the phone, it turns itself back on and when I pull out my phone a few hours later, surprise! My battery is dead! This button should be slightly recessed, and you should have to hold it down for a few seconds to turn the phone on when it is powered off. To me, this is inexcusably bad design on something that should be a no-brainer.

Software: This is my first Android phone, and I am not an expert, but you are probably also an Android novice, and might have the same trouble as me. If you are an Android pro just skip this part. Android has got to be the best feature of the phone, but it is still a source of frustration for me. It is very customizable and has a crazy array of programs that take advantage of every possible functionality of the phone, many of the most useful programs come preinstalled while all the others are available from the Android market. You can search, download, and install programs from the phone itself without hooking it up to a computer, so it is entirely self-sufficient. I love this, and could go on about how useful this is. Unfortunately it comes preinstalled with a suite of T-Mobile software that is baked into the phone. You can't delete it, you can hardly modify it, and I pretty much hate all of it. T-Mobile has apparently decided that I am a pre-teen girl, and has dumbed down everything for me and integrated social networking with all aspects of my phone. I personally would have preferred a blank phone with a link to the Android market and a functional phone, address book app and clock. Fortunately, the ability to get any app from the Android market has overcome these drawbacks for me. I had a serious problem with just making phone calls using the preinstalled phone app (ironic, on a CELL PHONE). I have a lot of contacts, so when I want to call "Andrew" I get a whole list of "Andrew..." and there is no room for the last name because they decided to use the space for a picture that I have to set up or provide from Facebook. I have to click on the entry to see if it is the Andrew I want, and doing that initiates a phone call to that person. I have to contact a lot of different people all the time and this was driving me nuts. So I just installed a new (free) phone app from the Android market, and problem solved.The problem I have with Android itself is that it seems that third party applications have much more control over my phone than I do. I don't have access to the files on the phone, which is crazy. I downloaded a file that one of my programs needed to function, and I realized that there was no way for me to find the file on the phone. You have to download a third-party app and give it permission to have full access to your phone for the privilege of seeing your own files. You can't close programs, you can just open something else or go back to the home screen, which sort of minimizes the program. How do I not have an option to close a program? Guess what, you have to download an app for that! A third party app that again gets access to your whole phone, is always on, and potentially destabilizes your device. Finally, many of the apps seem to be cloud-based, they need an internet connection to function. Privacy concerns aside, this is fine unless you don't have reception, which is a little too frequent for me.

T-Mobile: I live in the northeast and I travel around, and T-Mobiles coverage area is not that great. If you are not in a populated area you probably won't get good coverage up here, and there are huge areas with no coverage at all. The reception doesn't penetrate buildings very well, in my experience. The HSPA+ connection that makes this phone "4G" is pretty fast, but it seems to me that it usually takes a few seconds (sometimes more than a few) before the data begins to transfer, which negates the extra speed unless you are downloading a large file, which is where it really shines. To be honest, I use the phone a lot but I'm not downloading movies or anything, so it works pretty well as long as I have any kind of reception, even if it is not HSPA+. But it won't be replacing my home internet anytime soon.

UPDATE 9/28/2011 After 10 months of use there are a couple of things I'd like to update. First, T-Mobile has improved their reception, at least in my part of the country. Second, I have come to peace with the battery. I think the Android software has been updated to be more battery efficient, and I am careful about how I use the phone so I can get a full day out of it now rather consistently. I do several simple things:1) I keep bluetooth, GPS, and wifi radios off unless I am using them. I have put shortcuts to these functions on my home screen, I just tap them to turn them on or off. GPS is a real battery drain.2) I don't install or run unnecessary programs. This might not work for you, I don't really use my phone for games and weird widgets.3) I restart the phone every few days. It seems to help it run smoother and drain less battery, probably because once you open a program you can never really close it and be sure that it is off, and the little background processes start to pile up. It seems like when you turn the phone off it doesn't really turn off, it just goes into a sort of hibernation and it reboots really quickly, so I like to choose the "restart" option which forces it to do a full reboot.4) I finally found a flippin' huge extended battery, mine is from Hyperion. It comes with a new (flimsy plastic) back cover and it more than doubles the battery life. The phone is a bit bulkier, but battery problem solved, for around $25.Other comments: The power button is still stupid to me, and I'm still bitter about it. Whatever. Also, the GPS just won't work sometimes. I don't get it. If it doesn't get a signal in the first 10 seconds, it never will. One time I left it on for hours out of spite, and it just couldn't find a signal (but it did burn through my battery). I have to reboot the GPS, or reboot the phone itself to get it to work. One thing that helps is make sure it acquires a signal before you start moving, if you are already driving in a car it has trouble acquiring that first signal.Overall I am generally satisfied with this phone. I have gotten used to its quirks, it has become a reasonably efficient part of my life. Plus I can stream Netflix on it now due to a recent update! Woot!

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At first I loved this phone - all the features I could want, easy email setup, web browsing with Flash and a nice interface. Over time, however, the problems became apparent. I do not know if it is 4G growing pains, but this phone will completely drop signal for anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour. This happens on a daily basis, multiple times a day at my work where I have a consistent, full bar connection on 4G. This happens at home more frequently although I average only 2 bars on Edge. What is interesting is that at home, it will fully drop the signal and will go to WiFi calling and once it is in WiFi calling mode it will be at least an hour, if not a couple of hours, before it tries to connect back to the cell signal and this is when the phone is sitting in the area that has the best cell reception in the house; previous phones would only occasionally drop the call but they would never completely lose signal for more than a few minutes. I have tried having the settings with GSM only and with WCDMA only thinking that the phone was just having trouble switching between modes, but the issue still happens. This happens with both of the MyTouch 4G phones purchased. Something seems off about this phone's reception and regardless of how nice the interface is, if you can't make a call then it defeats the purpose of being a phone.

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I bought this phone a year ago, and right off the bat I noticed how terrible the battery life is, I am lucky to get it to last 5 hours before it dies. After about a month I started getting notifications that said my messages app had a force close. And my messaging becomes completelt useless until I restart the phone.and then it deletes every conversation I have on my phone. Also when I turn my phone back on it almost always resends old messages to people all on its own. Currently after a year my phone no longer likes to charge, ive tried several different chargers Nothing. And by a miracle that I can actually get it fully charged it randomly shuts itself off and when I turn it back on..surprise my battery is dead! My friend has the same phone and almost all the same problems. Biggest waste of money ever.

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I have already owned this for over 16 mo. now. I bought 2 MyTouch 4G for my 17 yr. old daughter and myself and the only big, big headache is the battery life. I use wifi all day long and that is the only one I keep on all the time. It will barely give you 5-6 hours on one charge, so I bought 3 more batteries and 4 more chargers, cars, home and office, and if you want it to last all day you have to have it hooked as much as you can, so it is very inconvenient because when is plug charging you have to leave it unattended or away from you and lose phone calls. Not a good phone if you use it normally. Battery live is bad, bad, bad.HTC, please fix that problem and you made a good phone otherwise.

But be aware that if your company is on Exchange 2010, this phone does not support it (see the HTC and T-Mobile forums). Not only that, there is NO date on when either company is estimating it will.

I suppose they spent a lot of time making sure that you could do Facebook updates without problems, but at the expense of not testing the phone (or intentionally releasing a defect) for most serious business users.

Worse yet, this is the only 4G Android iPhone type phone that T-Mobile has. The G2 has a slider keyboard.

Also disappointed that the T-Mobile store I upgraded from didn't call this out as an issue, but once I called Customer Care - they knew all about it. Not happy.

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This smartphone is amazing for many reasons! Here a just a few:- Genius button: voice activation for calling, sending someone a text or email, searching the web, or finding a business. Love this feature!- Can have 5-7 home screens. Easy way to organize your applications and features.- Takes great photos with nice editing features!- Navigation- Email- Pefect Size- And many, many more!I definietely recommend this phone. :-)

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As a phone this model is more than adequate. As a camera it is a big disappointment with poor contrast, washed out images and very poor low-light qualities.

Don't bother with this phone (released in November 2010) if you are uncomfortable with the now outdated Froyo version of the android OS. After 13 months on the market and over 6 months of T-mobile promises, the Gingerbread OS update remains elusive for the vast majority of users.

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I ordered this phone in December 2012, and received it 3 days later. That was great! Phone worked great until recently when my battery was at 30% and I was on the way to put it on the charger and noticed the phone had already turned off. I charged it over night, and still nothing. I then tried to reset it and switched batteries. I also tried another charger, still NOTHING. Hopefully I can get a replacement. Until I figure out what the problem is I don't know if I would recommend.

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I got this phone for free by signing a two year contract with T-Mobile (it's normally $99 with the contract, but they were running a New Year's special if you bought online). It's my first smart phone and I couldn't be happier.

How much do I love thee oh phone? Let me count the ways. It's fast as hell, it plays video flawlessly, the screen resolution is excellent (way sharper than my iPod Touch), the OS (Android Gingerbread) is elegant, clever and intuitive, it has a front facing camera for video chat, it has a high quality speech recognition program that responds to voice commands to let you make phone calls, text, etc., its navigation program is pretty much just as good as my mom's Tom Tom (it speaks to you and everything) and it fits nicely in my pocket.

While this is my first smart phone, I've used my girlfriend's old iPhone 3G and newer iPhone 4 many times. While those are both quality pieces of phone, there is nothing those phones did that this phone doesn't do. It's noticeably better than the 3G, and at the very least just as good as the iPhone 4. In fact, it has better technical specs than the iPhone 4 in several instances (e.g. the iPhone 4 has 512 MB of RAM while the myTouch 4G has 768 MB.) Considering the price difference when compared with the iPhone 4 and 4S, there really is no reason to buy the iPhone other than the cachet of owning the latest Apple product. While I do think Apple makes good products, I still think their phones are a little overrated. I consider this phone in the same league as the 4S performance wise and I got it for free. If I had spend a bundle on one of the top-of-the-line Android phones it would have technical specs that blow the 4S out of the water. Plus, the old idea that while Apple products may be pricey, they are easier to use and better designed that their competitors is null. Android works pretty much exactly the same way iOS does, but has the added benefit of greater customize-ability and more available Apps.

So long story short, if you're thinking about getting this phone, do it. You won't regret it.

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I hate this phone, feel duped because the Tmobile sales guy convinced me to buy this over another phone. I've had it for over 1 year and still hate it.

1. Battery drains too fast - if you use the phone for emailing or data searches on the internet, expect the battery to be dead within a few hours.

2. Texting is a pain - if you hold the phone "portrait," the keyboard is so small that unless you have toothpicks for fingers, you're going to misspell every word. If you hold it landscape, you can't swype or reach some keys unless you have "man hands." And the predictive text loves to suggest super useful words such as "goiter" when I just want to type "for."

3. It is not user-friendly - the next steps to do anything are not intuitive. So, you will spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to use the phone. Even the Tmobile techs are stumped - I called once to ask them how to do something with ringtones and he had no idea. I finally figured it out (it took like 10 steps when it should have taken 1 or 2 on a good smartphone) while I was on the phone with the Tmobile tech and he said, "Can you please teach me how you just did that?" If you have to teach the phone company techs how to use the phone, perhaps the phone is not so user-friendly.